Los Angeles "Clippers" players showed up today for their game. For the pre-game warmups they turned their jerseys inside out so that neither Los Angeles nor Clippers was visible. Looking at them there, hurt, seared, embarrassed, confused, proud, it is hard to criticize their action. But not impossible. They should have refused to play the game. Once they played the game they got crushed, 118-97. Impossible to fault that performance.
The National Basketball Association is composed of players 80% of whom are African-American. Charles Barkley said yesterday "It's a black league," and it is, for the players. The owners however are not black. Many are Jewish: Sterling, Dan Gilbert, Mark Cuban, Bruce Levenson/Michael Gearon, Jr., Bruce Ratner, Joshua Harris, Herb Kohl, Micky Arison, Jerry Reinsdorf, H. Irving Grousebeck, Robert Sarver, Bruce Ratner, Paul Guber/Joe Lacob, Leslie Alexander, Herbert Simon, Larry Tanenbaum: that's sixteen out of thirty, 53%. The commissioner Adam Silver is Jewish, as was his predecessor, David Stern. Fifty-three percent plus the commissioner, that's a Jewish-owned league or close to it. There is one black owner, Michael Jordan. It is fifteen-times more a Jewish-owned league than a black-owned league.
So, there are dual racial or ethnic concerns here. Blacks and Jews have had a strained relationship in America, since at least the 1960's. I do not know the origins of it. So far, this blog is the only "media outlet," if I may be so presumptuous, that I am aware of, to mention directly this other racial/ethnic issue: How Jews treat black people. I guarantee others are thinking and talking about it privately. Donald Sterling ne Tokowitz is the worst but there is also Dan Gilbert with his religion-inspired, hateful screed against LeBron James.
We have an undeniably black league of players employed by owners who, by a majority are Jewish; a Jewish owner exposed as an ugly racist, and a new Jewish commissioner, beholden to those owners, charged with disciplining that ugly, racist Jewish owner. The owners and Adam Silver should have acted by now. It is a binding moment in NBA history for Jews and African-Americans.
